Anything but this.

If you ask me how I’m doing right now, I’m going to say I’m busy.

Yeah, I’m suspicious of that word as much as the next person but with a thousand photos to edit from two back-to-back weddings, a few custom stitching orders, personal work and the tasks of my part-time job and my volunteer job and my Mom job, it’s economic. And yet, it’s inadequate. It’s a word that is devoid of emotion and often that’s fitting because when the plates are all spinning, I can operate best devoid of emotion. Emotions aren’t efficient. But that is not this time, not this season, not the truer story.

Nor is writing efficient. I don’t have time right now, check back in two weeks, I tell it. But if you are a writer of any kind, you know that it doesn’t work that way. It’s only patient for so long and when that runs out, the time it chooses is never convenient. I have to say, I admire its persistence.

The thing that has to be written right now is the thing I most don’t want to write. It’s bargained for my attention many times and my response has always been a firm Nope. And it’s not like writing doesn’t exist on this topic but that’s the thing about shame, it feels so singular.

So here I sit, writing you this letter that I don’t have time for to tell you about sentences that are being laid down in my journal that I don’t have time for, and yet this story insists. If emotions carry information, then the doggedness of shame that insists it’s art I guess deserves some reverence. Dammit.

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Is there a story inside of you so dogged that it insists it’s art? Maybe you’ve already course-corrected, changed your ways and changed your story, but it’s still there, patiently waiting to be told. I can help you. If you want to get it down in words or in visual art, check out Change Your Story. I have spots open this Fall to work with me 1:1 in either 4 or 8 week sessions.

Does your particular whispering sound like, Anything but this? We can walk towards that voice together.

Who was your first 😳?

The first person you compared your alcohol intake to, that is.

If you read last week's letter, then you know, #amwriting. I'm currently developing a character that is loosely based on one of my best friends from college, Anya. That is her real name and it's important for me to use it, at least here, because she's one of those people in your life you don't forget. And since I can't tell her that, nor can I tell her parents, this is the only way I know how to continue loving my friends that have died.

Anya and I were both nineteen when we met, even though she seemed at least five years older than me. She knew things I didn't, like how to shoot a gun, how to follow your bliss like Joseph Campbell, that juniper berries smelled just like gin, and what it was like to escape the Holocaust like her Mom had. She also knew how to drink. She was the first person I hedged my drinking behavior against: I go to class, even hungover and she hasn't been to one class this week; I don't drink before noon on weekdays (the Bloody Marys on Sundays or the bottles of wine cracked open on the PMS-skip-days don't count); I don't need pot in the morning to quell the shakes, but there isn't enough coffee on campus to keep me from nodding off in Chemistry. Her hugs never lasted less than 25 seconds and she was the first person I knew who got sober, decades before I even understood what that actually meant. More about her next week.

Last week, I also mentioned that I'm reading books that my book could potentially saddle up next to. This exercise is to make a list officially called "Book Comps" that you would include in an agent query but really, it's just gd enjoyable.

I'm slightly embarrassed that I've just finished Here Kitty, Kitty by Jardine Libaire.

Embarrassed because she took the time to send it to me two years ago, but in my defense, it was swiftly packed up in the great Remodel Move before I had a chance to read it. However, I did have a chance to gush over another of her books, The Sober Lush, that she co-wrote with Amanda Eyre Ward, just last summer when they came on The Unruffled Podcast, so I've made it up to her.

Here Kitty Kitty is very accurate at depicting how stripped down and bare your thoughts become when you are in active addiction, as portrayed by the narrator, Lee. Even as she's surrounded by the pulsating life of beauty and decay that is NYC. Jardine writes so shrewdly how addiction puts a barrier between you and your longings, one impossible to cross until your addiction has been reckoned with. I understood Lee. Again, I don't know if Addiction Fiction is a real genre, but if it does exist, this book fits nicely and Jardine is just an exquisite writer.

I have more book comps in my pile and look forward to sharing more with you. Do you have a favorite? Feel free to pass on your recommendations. In the meantime, #amwriting and #amsewing and #amnotcomplaining. 

Pardon me while I whip this out 🍆

I'm really calling on my Big Eggplant Energy rn.

I've always been risky. But getting sober in my 40s prepared me to bust through my 50s swinging. There's still just too much on the list of What I Want To Do With My Life that hasn't been crossed off.

My little sustainable design and fashion business is going as well as can be expected, considering I'm the designer/sourcer/maker/marketer/model/shipper. This is a place that I've been in many times over the 18 years I've been doing this. To scale means that I need to hire someone, even if it's models and hair+makeup for a proper photoshoot. And this is a place I can get easily overwhelmed and say, f*ckit, I'll just keep doing it all myself, which doesn't actually nudge the scale. All that being said, I'm also content. Not that I'm not still ambitious, but most days, I'm just basic happy.

All of this solitary time has allowed my imagination to meander and dammit if it doesn't keep going back to the idea of writing a book. That idea has inspired some action and I've actually had my butt in the chair on more days than not. This book idea has gone from Memoir to Women's Fiction to Magical Realism, I've even thought it could be a Graphic Novel. Trying to define the genre first has kept me circling the drain and not getting much actual writing done. Until, that is, I stumbled upon a genre that might not really be a genre called Addiction Fiction and that seems to have created an inviting container that I'm inspired to fill. I won't say that writing has been easier, f*ck no it's not easy, but there's been a lot less resistance to sitting down and doing it, even if it's been one not-very-good sentence after another.

So my next many newsletters may be filled with what is coming up as I'm plunking away at my keys. I'll feel too exposed to share actual excerpts but throwing out some hooks to see if I'm using the right bait feels...right. Plus engaged in all of these solitary acts is lonely AF. I'm also reading some book comps (competitors) to see how mine may fit but differ and I look forward to sharing those as well.

I'm strapping on my BEE and asking Failure to dance again and again. Some days I feel blissfully ignorant and some days I feel brave. What's your risky business these days?